UKRAINE PROHIBITS MPS AND OFFICIALS FROM TRAVELING OVERSEAS

During the conflict with Russia, the Ukrainian government has prohibited senior government employees and parliamentarians, including women, from traveling overseas.

The proposal was approved last week, according to Andriy Demchenko, a spokesman for the Ukrainian border guard service, who spoke to AFP on Monday.

They are now only permitted to go on business missions, he claimed.

The men of fighting age in Ukraine were instructed to stay in the nation, with a few exceptions, after Russian President Vladimir Putin dispatched soldiers to the country on February 24 of last year.

According to the new rule, top officials will only be permitted to see their children abroad, receive medical treatment, or return home when a loved one has passed away, said Demchenko.

Both local deputies and female civil servants are subject to the restriction.

Iryna Gerashchenko, a politician from Ukraine, condemned what she called a “populist choice,” pointing out that almost 15,000 of the local deputies were women and some of them were volunteers.
She wrote on Facebook, “At first, the authorities urged everyone who could to leave for the winter with their children, but now they are not permitted to leave.”

“The government continues to act in a careless manner that has nothing to do with the effort to stop abuses,”

The action was taken when many officials, including Oleksiy Symonenko, the deputy prosecutor of Ukraine, who had traveled to the well-known Spanish resort of Marbella, were accused of taking vacations abroad.

Following a string of corruption claims, Symonenko was one of the officials to resign last week in Ukraine’s biggest political shakeup.

An influential media outlet revealed on Friday that Yulia Tymoshenko, a former prime minister, had vacationed in an opulent property in the United Arab Emirates.

AFP